Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the reduction in her Department's real terms budget for flood defences on the adequacy of those defences.

The Government is currently investing a record £5.2 billion on building new and im-proving existing flood defences, double the value of the previous programme. Higher than expected inflation is causing challenges to the delivery of all infrastructure pro-grammes. Defra and the Environment Agency are currently undertaking an assessment of the potential impact of inflation. By spring 2023 we expect around 60,000 properties will have already been better protected by this programme.